Mourning

Bit of a different blog post today. Last Monday I was told that Grandpa had died. I am currently in Prague, a long, long way from friends and family. When I heard the news I sort of went numb. I couldn't cry, couldn't feel much. It was around 2am that it actually hit me and I was in floods of tears. This is a piece of writing I did after that:

"Cry. Let the tears fall down like slightly salted rain from an endless sky of despair. Let them run down your face, tickling, teasing, tormenting your skin as they weave their way your cheeks or run in rivers down the side of your nose. Not pretty. Not perfectly pretty Hollywood style crying. Coughing, convulsing, and choking as sobs shake the shit out of your body. Face screwed up in ways you can't understand and can't stop. Can't control. Uncontrollably imperfectly unpretty. Nobody gives a fuck about pretty when such sorrow ensnares you. It feels like you have been kissed by a cannonball and danced with a double decker bus on drugs. It's more than a bot of moisture around the eyes. You feel like shit throughout your whole body. Ribs feel like something's been fighting them from within. You can't catch your breath. Why does this happen? What makes this happen? I don't know, but it leaves you feeling wrecked. And what next? I don't know. I swallow. I breathe. I wipe away the tears. I write in a notebook and wonder if sleep will come tonight. I don't know."

Only a short piece of writing. I did eventually manage to sleep. I take comfort in the fact that he is no longer suffering, that he went peacefully with Grandma next to him and some of his favourite music playing. Today is his funeral and I can't go. However, I am in a city he loved. I'll do a more cheerful blog post about his funny things soon, such as the crocodile under the stairs and the dragon at Arundel Castle.


All The Happy Creatures Go On Their Cheerless Way*


*Words of a song he made up and used to sing to my mother, aunt, and uncle when they were children